What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

I’m president of the United States, and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli!

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

O citizens, first acquire wealth; you can practice virtue afterward.

There is nothing more tyrannical than a strong popular feeling among a democratic people.

An appeal to the reason of the people has never been known to fail in the long run.

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.